The Green Knowe Books by Lucy M. Boston

First published:The Children of Green Knowe, 1954; The Chimneys of Green Knowe, 1958; The Treasure of Green Knowe, 1958 (United States edition); The River at Green Knowe, 1959; A Stranger at Green Knowe, 1961; An Enemy at Green Knowe, 1964; The Stones of Green Knowe, 1976; all illustrated

Type of work: Fantasy (except A Stranger at Green Knowe, a moral tale)

Themes: The supernatural, nature, family, friendship, and death

Time of work: The mid-twentieth century and various other times

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Green Knowe Manor at Hemingford Grey, England

Principal Characters:

• Tolly, a lonely boy, who visits Green Knowe during school holidays
• Mrs. Oldknow, his wise and loving great-grandmother, who is a keeper of memories
• Toby, ,
• Alexander, and
• Linnet, seventeenth century children of the Oldknow family
• Susan, an eighteenth century blind child of the manor
• Jacob, Susan’s black servant
• Maria Oldknow, and
• Sefton, Susan’s vain and imprudent mother and brother
• Caxton, a ruthless, cunning manservant of the eighteenth century Oldknows
• Ida, a resourceful eleven-year-old, who is invited to Green Knowe for a summer
• Oskar, a displaced Polish child
• Ping, a sensitive Burmese child, who visits Green Knowe during holidays
• Hanno, an escaped zoo gorilla, who finds refuge in the thicket surrounding Green Knowe
• Dr. Melanie Powers, a witch, who seeks an ancient book of black magic at the manor
• Roger d’ Aulneaux, the Norman son of the original builder of the manor

The Story

In The Children of Green Knowe, Tolly, a lonely boy, travels through a flooded English countryside to spend his Christmas holidays with his great-grandmother, Mrs. Oldknow. Tolly, whose mother is dead and whose father, serving in the colonial army in Burma, is remarried to a largely unknown stepmother, yearns for “a family like other people.” The image of a dispirited child crossing flooded waters during a dark night to arrive at an ancient manor presided over by an aged, unknown ancestor evokes the mysterious tone suitable for the supernatural events that occur in the novel.

The next morning, the sun appears, and the dark, threatening floodwaters have receded, symbolically foreshadowing Tolly’s growth during the novel. Over time, Mrs. Oldknow relates the stories of three seventeenth century children, Toby, Alexander, and Linnet, whose portrait hangs above the manor’s hearth. Before long, their spirits appear to Tolly—at first, playfully and shyly and later, openly. Through their companionship, Tolly changes from a lonely exile to a child with the strength to play a part in the defeat of a curse placed by a gypsy upon an unkempt yew tree in the garden. Tolly himself “could hardly believe he was the same boy who had spent miserable holidays alone in an empty school.” By the end of the book, Tolly has begun to see himself as part of the story of the ageless manor.

A slightly older Tolly returns to Green Knowe in The Chimneys of Green Knowe (published in the United States as The Treasure of Green Knowe). As soon as Tolly enters the manor, he notes that the painting of the Oldknow family is missing. In its place is a smaller portrait of Maria, the eighteenth century wife of a Captain Oldknow. The former, on loan in a London exhibition, might have to be sold to pay for repairs to the manor. Tolly, now unable to contact his spirit playmates, is determined to find the funds needed by his great-grandmother.

As Mrs. Oldknow repairs an old patchwork quilt with remnants from the clothing of Maria’s family, she relates stories about their generation. Tolly learns that Captain Oldknow had made a Georgian addition to the manor to please his vain and pretentious wife. He hears of the struggles of their blind daughter, Susan, to become independent despite the ignorance and selfishness surrounding her. Susan’s salvation comes to her in the form of a black servant, Jacob. These two are the dispossessed children in the novel, one shackled by blindness and ignorance, the other by slavery. They liberate each other by their mutual love.

This time the menace to Green Knowe comes from the evil footman, Caxton, who conspires to steal Maria Oldknow’s jewels. After the jewels are stolen, a fire devastates the Georgian addition. Susan and her family are saved, but Caxton perishes. In a harrowing scene, Tolly finds the jewels hidden in a forgotten chimney of the manor. Tolly saves the manor and also plays a part in eighteenth century events. These actions fully integrate Tolly into the eternal present of Green Knowe.

The Chimneys of Green Knowe is structurally complex. It contains many stories within a story: the search for lost treasure, the story of Susan and Jacob, the despicable manipulations of Caxton, the pride and willfulness of Maria, the corruption of her spoiled son, Jonathan. The stories are interwoven like the pieces of the patchwork quilt that Mrs. Oldknow repairs. As the critic Jon Stott points out, the quilt is the “metaphor for the restoration and recreation of the past” in the novel. Susan, the blind, intelligent, and resourceful child, is one of the series’ most finely sketched characters.

The series’ third book, The River at Green Knowe, is considered by critics to be the weakest. Tolly and Mrs. Oldknow are absent from its pages, the manor having been rented for the summer by two eccentrics, who invite three children as guests: Ida, an imaginative eleven-year-old; Oskar, a Polish orphan; and Ping, a quiet Oriental youngster. The children have a series of realistic and fanciful adventures while exploring the river surrounding the manor. The episodes do not reinforce a unifying theme; they remain disconnected, although memorable within themselves. The river, rather than the house, is the central motif of the book, linking the disparate episodes by its timeless wanderings.

Lucy Boston won the Carnegie Medal for A Stranger at Green Knowe, the only realistic novel of the series. The story begins in the dense Congo jungle, where a gorilla family lives in tranquillity. Their peace is shattered by a hunting party, which kills the dominant male and captures a young gorilla named Hanno. Hanno is taken to the London Zoo, where he endures a life of unending monotony and confinement within a concrete cell, far from the “elemental earth” that had been his home. Ping sees Hanno while on a field trip. Ping, who once endured refugee camps, feels an immediate kinship to the caged animal. Understanding its fury at the confining steel bars of a concrete cage, Ping hands him a peach, and the two unwittingly bond.

While Ping is visiting Mrs. Oldknow, Hanno escapes and finds a haven in the thicket bordering Green Knowe. Here he stays for three glorious days of freedom, fed secretly by Ping. At the end of the book, Hanno is killed. Surrounded by “a tight little urban, overbuilt England,” only the thicket of Green Knowe could give Hanno the few days of freedom he once had known. Ping and Mrs. Oldknow, as well as the reader, recognize that Hanno preferred to die rather than return to captivity. Although Hanno’s death is tragic, the reader sees the dignity of Hanno’s end.

A Stranger at Green Knowe is one of the most memorable animal stories written. Boston’s lyrical yet realistic description of gorilla life in the wild and her finely delineated portrait of Hanno, who never becomes humanized and always remains a powerful, potentially destructive creature, contrasts sharply with modern society’s superficiality and mindless cruelty toward nature. Hanno symbolizes the elemental power of life, brutalized to be observed by “civilized” man. The zoo represents modern, mechanistic society, which Hanno can escape only by death. Only in the tranquil thicket of Green Knowe can a temporary respite be found. This time, however, the security of Green Knowe does not last.

Boston returned to fantasy in An Enemy at Green Knowe, with witchcraft as its predominant motif. The harmony of the ancient manor is threatened by Dr. Melanie Powers, who seeks an ancient book of sorcery within its walls. Powers invokes a series of diabolic curses to gain control of the manor which only Tolly and Ping, by their resourcefulness and love, can subvert. The idyllic world of Green Knowe is contrasted sharply with a demonic force of disorder, hypocrisy, and evil. Boston uses many mythological archetypes to underline the cosmic significance of the struggle. Powers destroys the roses and birds of the paradisiacal garden, and only the words of an ancient Latin incantation during an eclipse of the sun can free the manor from the diabolic attack.

The last book of the distinguished series is The Stones of Green Knowe, in which many of the children from past historical eras are reunited. The book opens around 1120 c.e., when the Norman manor is being constructed. The second son of the manor, Roger d’Aulneaux, watches with excitement and anticipation. By means of two ancient stone chairs, which he uncovers in forest undergrowth, Roger travels through time to visit the manor in the future, interacting with many of the children featured in earlier novels. During his visit to the modern period, he is greatly disturbed by what he sees: crowded houses, a countryside bereft of wildlife, fields empty of wildflowers, noisy machines, and waste along the riverbank. He finds, however, that peace and beauty remain in the gardens and thickets of Green Knowe. In the last episode of the book, Roger meets Mrs. Oldknow as a young girl, accompanied by children of other generations. Mrs. Oldknow gives a ring to Roger, knowing that the ring will return to her in time. A timeless, unending circle, symbolizing historical continuity, is created by the gesture. Despite the perils of modern technology, more threatening than any other danger of the past, Green Knowe will survive because the children revere their ancestral home. As “the others,” whose spirits will inhabit the manor, they will faithfully guard the dwelling to ensure its continuation.

Context

Green Knowe was Lucy Boston’s actual home, which is located in Hemingford Grey in Huntingdonshire on the Ouse River. It is surrounded, as described in the books, by gardens, topiary trees, thickets, and a moat. Part of the building dates from 1120 c.e.. Boston bought the house during a difficult period in her life. She worked for two years to restore it to its original simplicity. The massive stone walls of the edifice gave her “a unique impression of time as a co-existent whole.” Changing the building from a house that “was simply not fit for rational habitation” to its livable form required energy, persistence, and faith. During and immediately after World War II, the manor was the setting for concerts given for young men of the Royal Air Force and for Latvia refugees. Afterward, Boston turned to fiction, at the age of sixty-two, to fill up the gardens and the house with “gentler things” and “tender possibilities.” Tolly and his friends were invented.

Despite their imaginative inventiveness, most of her books, according to Boston, were begun by something she had personally felt or experienced. For example, Hanno was created after she saw a photo in The Times of the gorilla, Guy, in the London Zoo. After spending hours before his cage, much as Ping did, she decided to write A Stranger at Green Knowe to convey humankind’s cruelty to other living creatures and to portray the magnificence of this caged animal. The Children of Green Knowe was awarded the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. The fantasy books of the series are regarded as among the most outstanding fantasies and stories of the supernatural written for children, and the Carnegie Medal winner, A Stranger at Green Knowe, is considered a tour de force of animal fiction.